Williams told the inquiry that the treatment she received under Muthambi reminded her of the torture she underwent during Apartheid.

She further said the former communications minister had demoted her in 2016 from acting director-general back to deputy director-general and in the process forced her to pay back R35 000 of her salary.

But Muthambi says William’s testimony violates the credibility and spirit of the commission.

“This is exactly the Phumla Williams I worked with, who couldn’t pass the opportunity to tell a lie – any lie – to ingratiate herself with anyone in a position of authority, and now panders to the basest instincts of the public.

“Her emotional self-serving outburst, and entirely inappropriate attempt to refer to ordinary managerial and management processes as similar to torture, and her experiences in detention, is so deliberately emotionally manipulative, that it would have been laughable if her intentions in doing so were not so blatantly malicious and informed by an irrational (almost psychotic) hatred for me,” Muthambi says in a statement released on Tuesday.